


A Quiet House

by FabulaRasa



Series: The Asshole Universe [3]
Category: DCU
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:22:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: Wayne Manor is unusually quiet when Bruce comes home one afternoon.
Relationships: Hal Jordan/Bruce Wayne
Series: The Asshole Universe [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2194245
Comments: 55
Kudos: 308





	A Quiet House

**Author's Note:**

> Unlike other stories in this series, this is just one chapter, and it takes place in one afternoon. I wish there were a more exciting summary than "an irascible man spends an afternoon in his house with his family," but there it is. That's the whole story.

Bruce stood in his quiet house, listening to its stillness. 

Damian’s silence was explicable – he had barely looked up when Bruce had walked into the sitting room off the kitchen, pretending to be absorbed in his book. He was furious, of course, that he had not been allowed to come on Bruce’s recent mission, but it was undercover work and he ought to have known better than to have asked in the first place. Bruce had ignored his sullenness. It was Wednesday, which was Alfred’s day off, which meant Alfred would be in the city most of the day wandering farmers markets or whatever it was he did with his free time. It did mean that Damian’s petulance took up more oxygen in the house than it normally would have. 

“Anyone else home?” he asked Damian, whose eyes flicked up, then back down to his book.

“Upstairs,” he said, moving his jaw as little as possible.

Bruce nodded. He did not have Hal’s gift for jostling Damian out of one of his moods. Hal just talked louder and laughed more, and pretended it wasn’t even happening, until finally Damian just got so discouraged by his complete obliviousness that he gave up. It wasn’t like it hadn’t occurred to him that Hal used the same technique on him, when he was in a mood. 

He headed up the stairs, listening to all the quiet in the house. His shoes creaked on the stairs. 

He pushed back the door of the bedroom, thinking already about the forty-minute shower he was going to take. He had only been gone three days, but it had been a week’s worth of work, and memories he wished he could scrub off him like the grime under his collar. 

The bedroom was empty. The third floor was deathly still. Fuck, he thought, because it meant Hal had gone to ground. And he only did that when things were bad. Fuck fuck fuck. 

He stepped quietly down the hall, to the upstairs guest room. It was the one Hal had used, back when they were still sneaking around and pretending they weren’t sleeping together, before he had been ready to talk to Damian about the two of them. Hal had always been extremely careful about that one. If he ever stayed over at the Manor, he didn’t leave the guest room. Bruce would sneak to his room, but he would never sneak down the hall to Bruce’s. 

_I need this kid to like me,_ he had said. _Not least because he probably knows seven hundred ways to murder me with a coffee spoon, and I’m no genius but I know better than to piss off a tiny ninja._ Bruce had just laughed, because Damian was of course besotted with Hal. He found the Green Lantern endlessly fascinating, and practically hung on his every word. Because Hal had spent so little of his life around children, apart from occasional visits to his niece and nephew, he had no idea how to talk to them – which meant that he talked to Damian like he was just a short adult, which of course made Damian adore him even more. 

On patrol one night, not long after he and Hal had gotten serious, Damian had missed a landing he ought to have nailed and sworn a long vicious streak of vibrant curses he knew for a fact Damian had been unfamiliar with the week before. 

_Keep your language professional in the field,_ he had said sharply, but Damian had just cocked a brow at him. 

_But Lantern says that all the time._

_When have you ever heard Lantern use language like that in the field?_

_Not in the field. But the other night, in the guest room. I heard him yelling it._

_Yes. . . well,_ was all he had been able to choke out, and that had been the last conversation they had had about language. 

Bruce stood at the closed door of the guest room now, and gently pushed back the door. The room was dark and still, the curtains pulled against the afternoon light. Hal was burrowed under a mountain of covers, lying on his back with his eyes closed, still as a tomb effigy. Damn, damn, damn. Bruce closed the door. 

He bent beside the bed and put a careful hand on Hal’s arm. He couldn’t be sure Hal would hear an approaching step, so he was always sure to announce his presence by touch, if Hal hadn’t seen him enter a room. Hal could barely open his eyes. “Sweetheart,” Bruce murmured.

“It’s. . . fine,” Hal whispered. His voice was shredded.

Bruce shrugged off his jacket, took off his shoes, his tie. He climbed into the bed beside him. Thankfully he was on Hal’s right side, which meant Hal could hear him. He slid a careful arm around Hal, but he caught the tightening of Hal’s breath at it. So any touch was painful. That was where he was right now. He pulled his arm back. 

“Do you want me to call Leslie?” he said.

Hal gave a sharp exhale that would have been a laugh any other day. “So she can do what, exactly?” Bruce said nothing, because he was right. After a certain point, there were only so many meds you could take. And what meds were on offer were a blunt tool against this kind of pain, the kind that had by now seeped into every joint, inflamed every muscle. Every breath would be a dull agony for Hal right now.

He lay next to him and placed his hand on top of Hal’s, as gently as possible. The small joints were usually okay. Hal didn’t flinch at it. “How long,” he said quietly, but close to his ear. 

“Just a few hours. It will. . . I just need. . . lie down a little,” he said, his speech a little slurred. His breathing was so tight. Bruce heard him inhale sharply. That would be the waves of muscle spasms. In truth Bruce had seen him this bad once before, maybe twice. He didn’t know how long they lay there in the darkened room. He breathed with him. He only got up once, to pile on more blankets, when he caught the shudder of Hal’s chill. And then he lay back with him, sliding close enough to give him some warmth from his body without putting any pressure on his muscles. Hal just kept his eyes closed. 

“I need to give the ring back,” Hal said after a long while. 

“No,” Bruce said sharply. “You’re a Lantern, the ring belongs to you.”

“You don’t. . . understand. It’s. . . a weapon.”

“Hal, there’s no one more qualified to wield that weapon, this disease does not mean that you—”

He did give a laugh at that, but it was short and harsh. “You think my worry is, I’m not able to use the ring? Believe me I know exactly how I’d like to use it.” 

That silenced him. _But you’re not,_ he could say. _But you haven’t._ That wouldn’t change the fact that those thoughts were in Hal’s head. In this kind of pain, and carrying around an escape hatch, every minute of every day, who wouldn’t think about it? Maybe he was doing more than thinking about it. Maybe he even had the beginnings of a plan, in his head. It would have to be more than a passing thought, for Hal to consider surrendering the ring. 

An interesting thought: how many Lanterns, down through the eons, had used their rings in just that way? When you were handed the ultimate power, how long before you came to believe that you were the just and righteous arbiter of life and death, for yourself as well as for others? The Guardians talked about the will of a Lantern as their single most important quality. He had always thought that strange. Why not courage? Or compassion? Or strength? Why _will_? Maybe what they meant was, the will to not be driven mad by the power of the ring. The will to resist the pull of the ring, when it offered you a way out. The will to fling it from you, if you needed to. 

Hal’s eyes were open now, and he was staring at the ceiling. “Tell me what it would look like,” he murmured. 

“What what would look like?”

“If I quit. If I just. . . stopped. If I stopped working.”

“You mean, if you weren’t able to go to work anymore.”

“Yeah,” Hal said softly. “I’m lying here thinking, what does that look like? What if I quit going to work, quit being a Lantern, quit everything? I could. . . I don’t know what anyone would want with me. What would I. . .” He shut his eyes again. “I don’t have. . . anything left right now.”

“I know,” Bruce said, and it was so hard not to murmur as softly as Hal was. He wanted to gentle his voice, but he needed to make sure he was heard. “I know,” he said again, and he bent to Hal’s face, just brushed his lips against the side of his face. There was a streak of wetness there, from earlier, and Bruce kissed at it, kissed his forehead, rested his forehead against Hal’s. God, it wrecked him that Hal had been lying here for hours, quietly weeping with the pain. 

“You’re asking who you would be if you had to quit everything,” he said against his face. “You would be Hal Jordan. You would be you. You are larger than any of those things you do. You are more than all those things.”

“What would you. . . even want with me,” Hal murmured, so soft Bruce could barely hear him. “If I were nothing special.”

Nothing special. 

This man who was an elemental force of nature, like nothing and no one he had ever seen. This man who walked into a room and charged its molecules with the timbre of his voice, his laugh, his wicked sharp tongue. Who had bent the world to his titanic will, who radiated light and heat from his pores, whose very presence had unsettled Bruce from the first moment he had met him, and he had kept him at arm’s length as long as possible, had swiped back at every thrust, had fought and bit and struggled against the immense gravitational pull that was Hal Jordan. Nothing special, he said. 

Bruce tipped his face toward him, gently. “There is no answer I can make to that that you will believe,” he said. “There will come a day for all of us when we can no longer do the jobs that we do. Even Clark, I would imagine. I don’t have that many more years myself. That day will probably come sooner for you than for the rest of us, is all.”

Hal’s eyes were open, but bleared. He was watching Bruce. “I fell in love with Hal,” Bruce said simply. “Not the Green Lantern. My husband’s name is Hal.”

“Well technically it’s Harold,” he whispered.

“Thought that was Barry’s pet name,” he said, and Hal gave a faint quirk of a smile at that, and thank every god that had ever existed for that. Thank God for Hal’s smile, however weak. “I love you,” Bruce said, which he ought to have said before, that was what he should have said from the first. 

“Mm. Love you too.”

“Did you—” he started, and then stopped himself, because he had been going to ask if Hal had done anything in particular to make a flare this bad, and what had been going on, and why wouldn’t he have been more careful, and a thousand other things he should not be saying. And there was the grimmer possibility that Hal had done absolutely nothing to cause it. “Did you,” he said, quickly rearranging, “have a chance to look at Damian’s English paper before he turned it in?”

Hal was still just watching him. “Nice save,” he said softly, and Bruce looked away. They lay there in silence for a while, and he thought Hal might even get to sleep, but his breathing was still too tight for that. 

“I think perhaps,” Bruce said after a while, “that it might be time for you to have that conversation with Carol.” 

“The one about how it was me who papered her office with glamour pics of Justin Bieber?”

“Not that one.”

“Then the one about how I put the post-it on the new toaster in the break room that said ‘voice activated’ so she would spend all morning shouting at it?”

“Not that one either.”

“Well then I’m stumped.”

“Hal.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I know which conversation you mean.” He turned his head back so he was lying like he was before, still and straight. He closed his eyes.

“Getting to work every day is more than you can do right now,” Bruce continued gently. “Please just consider it.”

“Yeah well, couple problems with that idea, Sport.” His eyes were still closed.

“Like what?”

“Like, I’ve still got my apartment in Coast I have to pay for, and about a thousand other things, and food is nice, and believe me you do not want to see my medical bills. Not having a job is not an option, okay?”

For a minute Bruce was so stunned he couldn’t even muster words. “What in the hell,” he finally managed. “What in the hell are you talking about? For God’s sake, you have – you’re a billionaire, quit your goddamned job if you want to.”

Hal’s face twitched again in what was probably a grimace. “No, _you’re_ the billionaire. Look, I know where you’re going with this, all right? I’m not gonna live off of money I didn’t earn.”

“Like I do, you mean.” 

Hal’s eyes flicked open at that. “That’s not what I meant. That money – the money is yours, it belonged to your family.”

“Belongs,” Bruce said. “It belongs to my family, present tense. And that’s you.”

“You know what I mean, I meant your actual family, like the people who gave birth to you and shit.”

“Go to hell,” Bruce said, and Hal’s eyes were all the way open now. “You’ve lived in this house for almost a year, and you have the audacity to open your mouth and say that to me. Which one of my sons is not my actual family, or is that all of them except one, in your view?”

“I. . .misspoke,” Hal whispered.

“Oh you think,” Bruce said, and he got up off the bed. He was trying to control the spike of his anger, trying to level his breathing. _Your actual family,_ he had said. The obscenity of it was breathtaking. “You didn’t misspeak,” he said angrily. “You said exactly what you think. You toss out some definition of family that erases most of mine, and then you tell me you misspoke. If you think of yourself as not belonging to this family, then you’ll have to say the same about Dick, and Jason, and Tim, not to mention Alfred, who I suppose is a glorified valet in your mind. But what you really mean is that you and I are not family. That’s what you really mean to say.”

Hal’s eyes were closed again. “Please,” he whispered. Too late Bruce heard the lash of his voice. Hal was lying there defenseless against his rage, and he had raked his claws across him. Bruce rubbed at his forehead. 

He sighed and sat down on Hal’s side of the bed, but he was careful of his limbs, careful not to put pressure on him anywhere. “Look,” he said, and he kept his voice steady. “When you and I were married, I was under no illusions what you thought about the money. I knew you wanted nothing to do with it. But the day after we were married, I rearranged my financials. Obviously the bulk of the investments gets plowed right back in, and nine-tenths of the profit goes to everything that lies underneath this house, or to the League. The boys’ trusts are untouchable. What’s left over I take as yearly living expenses for myself, and I have it put in a separate account so I’m sure to be careful with it. It’s not extravagant by any means.”

Hal was still silent, so he kept on. “After we were married, I had that yearly expense account halved, with half going to my account and half going to your account. It’s still a generous amount. I knew it wasn’t an account you would care about or even want to know about, but I figured it would be there for when we had this conversation. Which seems to be going well, don’t you think?”

“Spectacularly,” Hal murmured. 

“The amount in your account is the same as the amount in mine. Your card and all information about your account are sitting in my desk drawer waiting for you. As I said, the amount is relatively modest, so if there are larger purchases you want to make, anything above say two hundred thousand, then there’s a second card for that, and another account.”

Still Hal said nothing. “I should have pressed you on this before,” Bruce said. “We should have had this conversation months ago, but the truth is I knew exactly what you would say, and I knew how angry it would make me.”

“How angry it would make you?”

“To hear how quickly you would dismiss the idea that you and I own anything in common. To hear how little you think of us as a family.”

“I don’t. . . come on, that’s not what I think, can you just—” 

“Or maybe I should leave it at, how little you think of us.”

“Or maybe it’s just that I love you and hate your money, you self-righteous asshole,” Hal sighed. 

“Then why are you in here?”

“Why. . . what?” Hal was looking confused. 

“Why are you in here, in this room? Why are you not in our room, why are you not lying in our bed right now? The answer is, because the minute you’re feeling bad, you can’t isolate yourself fast enough, you go right back to where you’re most comfortable, and where you’re most comfortable is and always has been _alone_.”

Hal made a coughing sound that might have been a laugh, and his eyes slid shut again. “Tell you what,” he said, and his voice sounded slurred with exhaustion. “Every now and again I have to remind myself how much I love you, because fuck if I had the use of my arms I would punch you in the face for that.”

“Then tell me I’m wrong. I’ll wait. But you can’t because you know I’m right and whatever else you may be, you’re not a liar. Why is it that after a year of marriage, you still have that apartment in Coast City in the first place? Why is it that you can’t let go of even the reminder of being alone, that you cling to it so hard? It’s the same reason you hide yourself away in here, because at the end of the day you lack the courage to admit how little you want to be a part of this family, how little you want to be a part of _us_.”

“Get out,” Hal said wearily. His eyes were open now and level on Bruce. “I mean it. I can’t fight my body and you, not today. So get out of here, go on, leave me alone.”

Bruce stood there, uncertain. Christ, what had he done. He had. . . all the frustration, all the misery and pain of the last three days’ undercover work, he had taken all that and hurled it at Hal while he was lying here, he had lashed him till he bled. Like a fucking monster. Hal’s eyes were shut again. 

It was as though he had found him lying there and kicked him, repeatedly. That was what he had done. That was exactly what he had done. He turned and left as quickly and quietly as he had entered, overcome with shame, nauseated with it. He rested his head against the wall in the hallway. He wanted to go back in there, apologize, try to do better. But Hal had asked him to leave, and he wouldn’t violate that. He wouldn’t make yet more of today about his own needs. 

He headed down the main stairs and heard a muffled laugh from the library as he crossed to the back of the house. He peered in and found Damian curled in a chair, watching something on his tablet. Jon was draped across the back of his chair, watching with him. A gameplay video, from the sound of it.

“Hey Mr. Wayne,” Jon said cheerfully. 

“Hi Jon. Do your parents know you’re here?”

“Yep,” he said, biting into the apple he had clearly swiped from the kitchen. “Texted mom,” he said through a mouthful of apple, and then he and Damian were cackling again about something on the screen. 

“Before or after you had already left?” Bruce said, and read the answer on Jon’s face. So that was another gift of today, was the angry phone call from Lois he was going to have to field. 

“Call her right now,” Bruce said. “Apologize, and make sure you have her permission to stay. Tell her that when you leave, I or someone in this house will drive you home. Jonathan, you know better than to be flying from Metropolis to Gotham by yourself and in broad daylight. You’re thirteen now, almost fourteen. You have to make better choices.” _Because I’m tired of getting my ass chewed about it,_ was what he didn’t say, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that the boy knew it. He had these uncanny eyes, too old by far for a teenager, like they were looking right through you. Whenever you were talking to him, he didn’t do that normal thing that teenagers did, which was evade eye contact as much as possible, flicking quickly away. Jonathan just studied you while you talked, steady-eyed and unblinking. He might have his father’s powers, but those eyes were Lois’s. 

“Yes sir,” Jon said, still not ducking his head. 

“But you can’t leave yet,” Damian said, looking up. “You haven’t even seen the kittens.”

“No way, Hafsa had her kittens already? You were supposed to call me!” 

“It happened while I was away! I had a box prepared for her in my room and everything, but she ended up sneaking down to the old barn. Want to go see?”

“Yeah!” Jon said, and launched himself off the chair. The two of them hit the ground like a herd of young elephants and barreled toward the back doors, racing each other through doorways and rattling Ming vases with every step, their shouts and laughter echoing through the house. “Call your mother!” Bruce bellowed after them. One of them closed the French doors so hard you could hear the panes rattle. This house was sturdily built, but it might not survive the combined adolescence of those two. 

He needed to head downstairs and get some work done. His latest foray might have been unproductive, but there was still data to be compared, and notes to be written. He ought to be heading down the stairs right now, not sinking into a library chair and putting his feet up and closing his eyes and thinking more about how infinitely he had screwed up today. He had always wondered, when he was younger, what exactly it was old people were thinking about when they sat staring into space like this. Well, now he knew: they were thinking about what massive fuck-ups they had been. 

He pulled his phone out and texted Lois. _Jon is here and safe,_ he said. _I can take him home after a while, or Alfred can._

 _I’m aware of where he is,_ was the terse reply. 

He snorted and put his phone back in his pocket. Well fuck you too Lois. 

His friendship with Clark had weathered much over the last fifteen years, but this was a new thing they had been unprepared for: how to be best-friend-in-laws. Damian and Jon spent every living minute they could together, and what had always been a close friendship had now become even closer. He had wondered if as they headed into their teenage years, those ties might loosen a bit. It would have been only natural; after all they were so very different – Jon so open and easy, Damian so closed off from the world, so wary. But at the heart of Damian was a little boy who tenderly cradled newborn kittens, and wanted nothing so much as to make the world safe for them. And at the heart of Jon were those watchful eyes. 

Last week he and Hal had been sitting out on the terrace, smoking a companionable joint and talking about that. Hal didn’t touch alcohol, of course, but THC did him more good than any pain medication Leslie prescribed, and Hal managed to keep himself well-supplied. Medical marijuana wasn’t legal in this state, but someone whose jurisdiction was an entire slice of galaxy wasn’t going to find that much of a difficulty. When he would sit outside and smoke on a warm evening, Bruce would always come and join him, and occasionally partake as well. Hal had laughed, seeing him smoke last week. 

“What?” Bruce had said. 

“Nothing, it’s just fun to watch it hit you. I miss getting a little baked, but I smoke so much now I don’t even feel it any more. Hey maybe I’ve got that thing they warned you about in high school guidance class, what is it, that amotivational syndrome. When they were desperate to think of something weed could do to you that would sound bad enough to keep you from tryng it. Could be that’s my problem right there, I’ve got that amotivational syndrome.”

“Our high school experiences were very different.”

“Oh you don’t say. Speaking of,” Hal said, taking a long toke and letting his head fall back against the lounge chair he was stretched on. On the lawns far below, Damian and Jon were playing some obscure variant of soccer that had devolved into a game of who could keep the ball away from Damian’s horsebeast of a dog long enough to keep him from eating it. They were not having much success, but the noise of their laughter drifted up in the dusk. “Have you thought about what you’re gonna do for Damian and high school?”

“Mmm,” Bruce said lazily, because Hal was right, he didn’t smoke that much, and it did have an effect on him. “Which is your way of saying, you think the days of private tutors are numbered.”

“I don’t know, I was just thinking out loud. You gonna send him to Gotham Academy?”

“I might,” he said, but in truth he hadn’t thought about it yet. He had thought there was time enough. But Dick had been Damian’s age when he had gone to Gotham Academy. Of course, Dick and Damian were two very different individuals. 

“He wants to go to school with Jon, you know that, right?”

“Does he now.”

“Mm hmm. I heard them talking about it the other day. The Gotham and Metropolis school systems have reciprocal enrollment now, Damian could enroll in a Metropolis public high school if he wanted. The same one Jon is planning on going to.”

Bruce gave a short laugh at that. “Yes, what could go wrong with that scenario.”

Hal took another drag, considered the lawn below. “Well, Jon could always go to Gotham Academy. You could come up with some sort of scholarship for the underprivileged children of exiled extraplanetary aristocrats, that sort of thing.”

“Mm hmm,” Bruce said, letting the pleasant haze tug at him. And then he raised his head, thought more clearly about what Hal had just said. _Aristocrat_ , Hal had said. Clark would have had to tell him that one; exactly who his family had been on Krypton was not information he shared readily, if at all. More evidence of how close Hal and Clark had gotten, over this past year. At some point he had realized with a jolt that Hal probably talked to Clark more often than he did. _In the divorce, I’m keeping Clark, just so you know,_ Hal had said. Bruce had just laughed. _In the divorce, you’re keeping a lot more than that, I didn’t sign a pre-nup._

“Well,” Bruce said eventually, “I imagine Lois would have one or two objections to the Gotham Academy idea.”

Hal gave a small exhale, and narrowed his eyes. “She would at that,” he said darkly. Something in his tone had made Bruce study him more closely. 

“You don’t like her,” he said in some surprise. 

Hal made a shrugging motion. “I like her fine,” he said. 

“You think she’s too hard on Jon.”

Hal gave him an odd look. “No,” he said after a pause. “That’s not what I think.” And then he rose, and stretched. The boys were pelting up from the lawn, yelling after Titus, who had the entire soccer ball in his mouth and had squashed it between his enormous jaws. “That fucking dog,” Hal sighed, and clapped a hand on Bruce’s leg. _Come on, let’s go inside and get something to eat,_ he signed, which he did when he was tired, and didn’t feel like working at hearing any more.

_You hungry?_

_Yeah, hungry for your cock,_ he signed with a grin, because Hal might still be a beginner in ASL vocabulary but of course the absolute first thing he had done was learn every single dirty sign there was, because he was Hal Jordan. 

“Oh my God, my _eyes_ , other people do know ASL you know!” Damian shouted up from the lower terrace, and then he and Jon had arrived, flushed and panting and covered in grass stains. Jon ran with a whoop into the house, still chasing after Titus. Hal gave Damian a playful cuff on his head. 

_You should show more respect_ , Hal signed, and Damian smirked back at him. The cuff became a hand on the back of his neck, leading him in, and Bruce watched Damian suppress a grin of happiness at it. Hal didn’t see it, how much Damian adored him, but then Hal was rarely aware of his effect on people. Every time he put a hand on Damian, the boy glowed like a fire had been lit inside him, just from the casual brush of Hal’s hand.

 _Me too, son,_ he had thought, as he watched the two of them head inside.

That had been just last week. A glorious long early autumn day, the weather still cradling its summer warmth, and he had thought Hal was doing so well. So much stronger than he had been before, and it had been weeks since any sort of serious flare – maybe even months now. It could be, he had thought that perfect autumn day, that the worst of this disease was behind him, and that a long gentle plateau was opening before him, before them both. A year of marriage now, and it could be that the hardest part of all of this was over – the hard part of learning how to be with each other, how to smooth all their sharp edges so they weren’t constantly slicing each other open, how to live alongside and with and around someone, all the thousand accommodations, large and small, of learning how to be married to someone. With the worst of the MCTD, it could be that all that was behind them too. 

Until today, of course. Seeing Hal lying there, more ravaged than he had seen him in a year, had been like losing all the air in his lungs. And it was not impossible that his anger at the disease had leaked out in his words to Hal, where values of “not impossible” included “highly damn probable.” And the weariness of Hal’s words, like a knife turning in his gut: _I can’t fight my body and you, not today._ What a bastard he had been.

From the kitchens he heard the sounds of Alfred’s return – cheerful aimless whistling as he put away his farmers market finds. He always came back in a good mood. He looked up as Bruce came in, and held up an enormous pomegranate. “Can you credit it,” he said. “The eye of man can scarce conceive. What do you suppose they do to their pomegranates, to make them the size of cantaloupe? Something involving radiation, I’ll be bound. We shall all have a half-life after tonight’s dinner. Oh and I found gooseberries, if you can believe it. I shall make gooseberry tart with pomegranate, though it’s anyone’s guess if this monstrosity has any actual flavor to it.”

“I need you to take Jon back to Metropolis later. He flew here and I promised Lois we would make sure he didn’t fly back.”

“Of course, but perhaps he’d like to stay for supper? A gooseberry tart is not to be lightly dismissed.” And then Alfred glanced up. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“Hal,” he said. “Not a good day.”

“Oh _damn._ ” 

“Did you even think to check on him this morning, before off you went to—” He stopped himself, because taking his anger out on Alfred would be the opposite of productive. Instead he filled the kettle and set it on the stove. “He’ll need some of that tea you make,” he said. “I’ll take up his tray, if you’ll do the tea. And maybe some toast.” 

“Of course,” Alfred said, bustling about with the ginger and the turmeric and all the secret anti-inflammatory ingredients he put in Hal’s tea, on days like this. “I did see Master Harold this morning,” he said, as he set to slicing the ginger. “For all you think that I skipped out the door with ribbons gaily streaming from my bonnet like a giddy schoolgirl. I would never have left the house if I had known.”

“He masks it,” Bruce said. “It can be hard to tell, sometimes, if—”

“And you think any of this is news to me?”

From the other room there were shouts and whoops of laughter, as Jon and Damian came crashing back into the house, slamming doors and setting all the windows rattling on the first floor. “ _Enough!_ ” Bruce bellowed. He strode to the central hall and body-blocked them at the foot of the stairs. “That is _enough!_ I will have _quiet_ in this house, dammit, and the two of you will stop behaving like rabid hellions, for God’s sake. You will not set one foot on those stairs. You will go back to the library and you will _not_ move a muscle, you will _not_ utter a sound. If I hear so much as the smallest sound out of either one of you, I will smash every gaming console in this house with a claw hammer, do you understand me?”

The boys looked suitably cowed, and too late he realized he had used his full voice, which had probably echoed off all the upper hallways and made more noise than anything the boys had been doing. The boys were looking at their feet, even Jon, who did for once in his life look a bit intimidated. 

“That’s better,” he said. “And for another thing—”

A kitten crawled out of Damian’s jacket, and he realized that both their hoodies were in fact squirming with animals. “For God’s sake,” he sighed. The kitten that had emerged was climbing its way up Damian’s neck to the top of his head, while Damian was trying to look solemn and chastened. “Get those animals out of here before Alfred skins both of you alive. And if he doesn’t do it, I will.”

“But Father, it’s getting cold at nights now,” Damian said. “The kittens need to be warm. I’ve got plenty of room, they can stay with me, they won’t be any trouble.”

“Absolutely not, they have their mother to keep them warm, and—” He caught sight of Jon’s jacket, which was not so much squirming as heaving and roiling. “What. Is. _That_ ,” he managed.

“The mother,” Jon said faintly. Bruce pressed his fingers to his forehead. 

“Go to the pantry,” he said. “There are crates in there from last week’s deliveries, and some old towels Alfred uses for cleaning. You can make them a bed, and they can stay in there. But for God’s sake do it quietly, do you understand me?”

“Is the Green Lantern ill?” Damian said, his dark eyes fixed on Bruce. 

“He’s—he’s resting. Stay away from the upper floors, and try to keep those animals from spreading disease if you can. And for God’s sake wash your hands.” He turned and strode back to the kitchen, where Alfred had the tray ready. 

“All going to die of toxoplasmosis,” Alfred muttered. “You’ve gone soft in your old age.”

“You let him keep a wounded chipmunk in a shoebox under his bed for two weeks,” Bruce pointed out. “After you had stitched him up using the Cave’s medical facilities and dosed him with antibiotics.”

“Yes, well, unto the least of these, as the Gospel says. Here, take some extra lemon, give it a bit of a squeeze before he drinks,” he said, sliding a dish of lemon wedges onto the tray as Bruce carried it out. 

The house was quiet as a tomb as he headed up the stairs, the boys humbled into silence, for once. He kept his own footfalls light, as he walked down the third-floor hallway. With any luck, Hal had managed to get some sleep. Sleep was the only medicine that did any good when it was as bad as this – sleep, and time, until the claws of it released.

He gently pushed back the door and set the tray on the bedside table. Hal’s eyes were open, and if he had gotten any sleep it didn’t show. Bruce knelt beside the bed. _Alfred made tea,_ he signed. He ought to have been signing before, to keep Hal from having to work. 

Hal sighed. He struggled to sit up, and Bruce kept a hand on him to help steady him. He looked like hell. _Also this,_ Bruce said. _I’m an asshole, and I’m sorry._ He brushed his fingers on his palm, twice, in the sign for _forgive me_. Hal reached for his hand and gently knocked his fingers aside, shaking his head. 

Bruce lifted the teacup and helped guide it to his lips. He combed a hand through the tangle of Hal’s hair. He was wearing it longer these days, and it was delicious. As if the man could possibly be any more beautiful than he was. Maybe that was the obscenity of seeing Hal felled like this; there was this thing in him that rebelled at the essential wrongness of it, at the sight of all that beauty and power crumpled and tossed to the floor. 

_A bite of the toast,_ Bruce said, and Hal dutifully complied. He even got him to take another sip of tea before he pushed it away. He fell back against the pillows, closing his eyes. Bruce stayed where he was, kneeling at the side of the bed. After a bit Hal opened his eyes again. 

_May I stay?_ he asked, and Hal nodded. Bruce considered. 

_Would some pleasure help?_

Hal looked like he was thinking about it. Sometimes when things were bad, it helped to give him something to focus on other than the pain. The pleasure gave him a sort of beachhead against the pain, or at least it gave him a few minutes’ relief. Slowly he nodded. Bruce worked his hand under the blankets. He found Hal’s hip, then rested his hand on the soft bulge inside his sweats. Hal gave a long slow exhale, and Bruce just gently rubbed at him. Erection would take him a while, but that was fine, Bruce had all the time in the world. 

After a while he gently tugged back the covers. He pulled at the waist band of Hal’s sweats, and freed his slowly thickening cock. He let himself take just a second to drink in how beautiful he was, then bent his head to his work. He suckled him slowly to hardness, listening for the small sighs and shifts of Hal’s breathing. He kept going even when he appeared fully hard – he knew from experience Hal could get even harder than this, and yes, there it was, the small arch of Hal’s hips that told him he was there. Not really able to lift those hips off the bed today, but Bruce could feel the ripple of muscle underneath. 

He pulled off and just licked him up and down, because that was what always got Hal going, and yes, there it was, the first audible groan. He put his mouth back around him and sucked him then, just slowly and steadily, not hurrying him along, but letting his body unfurl into pleasure. Hal’s hand came down to rest on his shoulder, working his fingers in. _That’s it gorgeous,_ Bruce thought. _Just fuck my mouth._

Hal’s noises were soft, involuntary quivers of sound. He imagined it was what he sounded like when he was jerking himself, just this quiet, and the thought made his groin tighten. Something about the sounds of Hal’s pleasure, when it was nothing but pleasure, drained of any larger context, was so hot it made his own cock thicken just thinking about it. Hal’s orgasm, when it came, was slow, and the release of his breath a long shuddered gasp. Bruce could feel the shake of it in his arm. He hoped the pleasure was engulfing him like warm waves, settling into his whole body, the endorphins seeping into all his joints, bathing him in light and warmth. Bruce drank all of him, licked and nuzzled his cock as he slowly softened. Then he gently tucked him back into his sweats, pulled the covers back over him, settled him in. Hal’s eyes were open and watching him. 

Bruce rose and brushed a kiss on his forehead. “Come lie down,” Hal whispered aloud, so he did. Hal turned to face him. It was a good sign – he didn’t wince when he turned over. “You’re hard,” Hal said, glancing at the crotch of his pants where a not-unpleasant thrum had set in. Maybe the day would come when sucking off Hal wouldn’t get him hard, but that day was not today. 

_I’m fine,_ he signed. 

“You need to get off.”

Bruce shrugged. _I can wait._

“Maybe I want to see it.” Hal’s eyes were just watching him. So he unzipped his pants, pulled out his cock, just started jerking himself desultorily. There was no lube here, so he didn’t get fast with it or anything. Just let himself get even harder, while Hal watched. God, he loved it when Hal watched. 

Because they were both mildly obsessive personalities, they tended to develop sexual fixations. They would find something they liked and do that thing and only that thing, for weeks at a time. Probably other, more psychologically healthy people varied their sex lives a bit, tried a bit of everything all the time. But Bruce’s current fixation was getting fucked, and Hal was pretty fixated on it too. He knew that was what Hal was thinking about, as he watched him. Hal loved to watch him jerk himself, while he was getting fucked. He knew exactly how to make Hal go faster, how to make those thrusts frantic, how to make him absolutely fucking lose it. It just took a hand on his own cock, steadily stroking himself while Hal fucked him. 

Hal edged closer, slid an arm under him, pulled Bruce in so he could whisper right against his ear. “You know how much I wish my cock was in you right now,” he murmured, and Bruce did make a sound at that, though he tried not to. He was trying to be as quiet as Hal had been. “We had any lube in here, I’d get my hand up you, rub you just the way you want.”

“You can’t—really move—your arms—right now,” he panted, and Hal laughed against his face, warm and soft. 

“Well there’s that,” he said, but Hal was able to laugh, and it was so beautiful, he was so beautiful, fuck he wanted him so much. His cock was leaking so much. 

“I love how wet you get,” Hal was whispering. “God, you get so slick you barely need lube, look at that. I know what’s getting you so wet, I know what you’re thinking about. You wanna get fucked, I know.”

“It can—wait,” he said, a strangled gasp. Hal’s hand was straying down now, brushing against his balls. God, he wished he had pushed his pants down further. Hal’s hand slipped behind his balls, his thumb pressed against his rim, pressed just inside, and the pressure was firm and relentless. 

“You have any idea how much I love to come inside you,” Hal breathed against his ear, and that was it, his orgasm washed over him and his hand was coated with it. He groaned too loud. But it was the thought of what Hal was saying – not just the words he was saying, but that he knew exactly what combination of those words would make Bruce come, that was what had done it. His body wouldn’t quite stop coming, and another wave pulled another gasp from him, another thick drip of wet sliding down his cock. 

And then Hal was sitting up, and he had slid his mouth down around Bruce’s cock, he was cleaning him, licking off all his cum, oh God, the sight of it made him groan again. Hal licked his abdomen, where some of it had splattered. Then he lay back down on the pillow beside Bruce. “Had to make an executive decision there,” Hal said. “I wanted to taste you, but I also wanted to see you come. So I compromised.”

He leaned over and drank some more of the tea, probably to wash down the taste. “Alfred’s going to kill me if there’s more cum in your stomach than tea,” Bruce murmured, and Hal gave another small laugh, re-settled on the pillow beside him. For a while they just watched each other. He should really zip himself back up, instead of lying here, lazy and debauched and with his cock hanging out.

“That was a lot of cum,” Hal said. “Did you not get off while you were away, or something?”

“Wasn’t really time,” he said. “I had other things to think about.” 

“Mm,” Hal said. He had picked up Bruce’s hand and was just rubbing his thumb against it, idly. “I don’t want our bedroom to be a sickroom,” Hal said carefully, his eyes still just watching Bruce. “That’s why. That’s why I come in here. I don’t want our bed to be about that.”

Bruce said nothing for a while. There was an answer, but he needed to find the right one. He couldn’t afford the wrong one. And he had opened his mouth too many times today on the wrong words. He spoke it, but he signed at the same time, because he needed to make sure Hal heard all of it. “Our bed,” he said finally, “is _our_ bed. It’s about all of our life, not just the sex. We fight in that room, we tell the truth in that room, we will do any number of things in that room that are not sex, because our life together is more than just sex. And when we are ill, we are ill in that room. That room is our whole lives, or it’s not real. And I want real. I married you because for once in my goddamn life I wanted real.”

Hal blinked, like he was thinking about that one. It might not have been the right answer; it might not have been enough. Then Hal bent his head to Bruce’s shoulder and just held it there. Bruce brought his arms around him, held him close. He knew all the things Hal wasn’t saying – wasn’t saying, _I’m so fucking scared right now of what will happen to me_ , wasn’t saying _I just want it to end,_ wasn’t even saying _I’m so angry I can’t even breathe around it._ Bruce knew all those things, and Hal knew that he knew them. So they held each other, and breathed together.

After a while Bruce got up. He tucked himself back together, righted his clothes. _Come on,_ he signed. _Let’s come to bed._ And he got up, came around to the other side of the bed. Knelt again. Hal sighed. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Do you have any fucking idea how much I hate it when you’re right.”

“Well fortunately for you it doesn’t happen all that much.” And he held out his hand, and Hal grabbed it, and hauled himself up. He winced as he moved, but he was at least mobile. Bruce got him on his feet. He slid Hal’s arm onto his shoulders, and got his arm around Hal’s waist. Even so, Hal was swaying where he stood. 

“Just one step at a time,” Bruce said. He had made sure he was on Hal’s right, but even the hearing on his right side was not excellent, which was something they were both trying not to think about. They made their shuffling way out the door and down the hallway. About halfway down Hal held up his hand for a rest, and he held him there, while he breathed heavily and rested his head against Bruce’s. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of motion – a dark head appearing and disappearing in the side corridor, just before their bedroom. Bruce gave a short sharp motion with his head, barely readable to anyone who wasn’t Damian, and the dark head quickly ducked out of sight. 

He got Hal through the door of their bedroom and onto the bed, and he piled the quilts on. Over the last year his blanket collection had grown exponentially, because of Hal’s tendency to get cold, and also because of Alfred’s belief that there was no disorder – genetic, viral, or bacterial – that could not be solved by a nice warm quilt. 

“I’ll go get the tray,” Bruce said, stroking Hal’s head. Hal was still breathing hard, but he nodded. Bruce shut the door quietly behind him. 

Damian was waiting in the hallway, and his brow was furrowed. He glanced nervously at the bedroom door. “Will he. . .be all right?” he asked.

“He will. This happens periodically, you know that.”

Damian gave a quick nod, but he kept his eyes down. “Will he die,” he said. 

“No,” Bruce said sharply. Damian looked at him then, and his eyes were skeptical. 

“He will not die,” Bruce said, trying to smooth the edges out of his voice. “The MCTD makes his life. . .difficult from time to time, but he won’t die.”

“So people never die of it?”

“He will be fine,” he said, evading the question. “It’s just a bad day, is all. Did Alfred take Jon home?”

“He’s going to in a minute. But I thought. . . I thought I might be able to help a little. If. . . he needed help, I mean. I know when he’s ill he doesn’t. . . want me around.”

Bruce bowed his head. “He doesn’t—it’s not that. It’s not that he doesn’t want you around. The truth is, he doesn’t want anyone around when he’s ill.”

Damian nodded. “I know,” he said. “I’m the same when I’m not well. But that’s why animals make the best company. And I thought. . . well, there’s one of Hafsa’s kittens who’s the boldest of them, and the most independent, she doesn’t mind going on adventures away from her mother, so I—” 

Damian reached into his hoodie and emerged with a gray fluffball of a kitten. Bruce opened his mouth to reprove him, because Damian had been explicitly told to leave those creatures in the pantry, but something in his son’s hopeful face wouldn’t let him do it. And something in Damian’s voice when he had said _will he die_ — honestly, what was the boy supposed to think? Bruce was always so intent to draw that protective veil around the two of them when Hal was at his most vulnerable, and it hadn’t once occurred to him that in closing their bedroom door so firmly, he was shutting out Damian. Damian, whose fierce adoration of Hal meant that he would be frightened that this too would be taken away from him. The boy had lost too many people he loved, in his short life. And there were all sorts of ways to lose people. 

“Why don’t you take her in then,” Bruce said.

“Really?”

“Of course. Just be careful not to tire him out. And for God’s sake if that creature makes a mess on the carpet—”

“She won’t, I swear! She’s very well-behaved, she would never think of such a thing.” And tucking the kitten close to his body, Damian tip-toed to the bedroom door, slipped carefully inside it. He could just head Hal’s faint “hey kiddo,” as the door closed behind him. 

Bruce stayed there a moment, thinking. And then he headed down the main stairs to the kitchen, where Alfred was gathering his keys. “I’ll take Jon,” he said. “You’ve had a long day. Don’t worry about supper, we can forage.”

Alfred arched a brow. “So that’s a no on the gooseberry tart?”

“Well now I didn’t say that, did I,” he said with a small smile, and Alfred nodded and quietly accepted his peace offering. 

“Come on,” Bruce said to Jon, who was lurking over by the kitchen fireplace. “I’ll drive you home.” The boy trotted behind him to the garage, and Bruce grabbed a key from the pegs on the wall, after deliberating which one. He tended to default to the Jaguar for everyday errands. There was no denying that it had a far smoother ride than many of the more expensive cars. _There’s British engineering for you,_ Alfred would say with pride, though what he knew about engineering could be written on a recipe card. 

“Go on, get in,” Bruce said, because the boy was standing beside the car, hesitating. 

“Oh,” Jon said. “We’re taking this car?”

“Yes,” he said with a frown. “What’s the matter?”

“No, it’s just—I thought, when you said, you were driving me, that maybe you meant—you know, in the _other_ car.”

“You thought I was just going to drive the Batmobile across the bay in evening traffic?”

“I mean. . .”

Bruce gave a sharp laugh. “Get in,” he said. 

The boy was quiet on the drive, which was a bit unusual; normally Jon was the chatterbox of the two boys, but then he had never really spent any time alone with Bruce, and he was clearly a bit nervous about it. Not that he had ever seen Jon nervous about much of anything, but maybe “alone in a car with Batman” was what did it.

“About what I said earlier,” Bruce said, as he merged onto the expressway that would take them around Gotham. “About making better choices. I understand how much you enjoy flying, but you have to understand the kind of risk you’re taking when you do that.”

“You sound like mom,” he said. 

“Well, there’s a reason for that. Your mother and I are both concerned for your safety, as is your father.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. He looked out the window. He didn’t say anything else for a bit, and when he spoke next he kept his head turned away. 

“Mr. Wayne,” he said, “do you think that the way I am is. . . wrong?”

Bruce frowned. “The way you are?” he said, wondering for a minute what the hell conversation he was in. 

“You know, with my. . . with the things I can do, and stuff like that. Do you think it’s a bad thing to be like that?”

Bruce was silent for a bit. He had to fight the temptation to veer the car onto the shoulder, pull out his cellphone, and call Clark immediately. He didn’t know what he would say, but it would probably begin with _How could you possibly have screwed up this badly, and that’s coming from me._ So he did one of those things: he did pull the car to the side of the road, and he sat there. 

“I didn’t mean to make you mad,” Jon said in a small voice. 

“Listen to me,” Bruce said. “I’m not mad, but I do need you to hear me. There are two answers I can give you, and I am curious to know which one you would have, the hard one or the easy one.”

“Both of them,” the boy said, and Bruce nodded. 

“All right then. The easy answer is this: your powers are neither good nor bad, they are simply a genetic trait, along with having dark hair and being right-handed. It is simply who you are, and it’s not wrong or right any more than it’s wrong or right to have your particular hair color.”

Jon gave a small nod. “What’s the hard answer?”

“The hard answer, Jon, is that your powers are an extraordinary gift of the universe. They are astounding, and wondrous, and the things you will learn to do with them, as you learn more how to control and direct them, will be equally astounding and wondrous. That’s a hard answer, because when the universe gives us extraordinary gifts, often extraordinary things are asked of us in return.”

“My mom wants me not to use them,” he said in a soft voice.

“Your mother is right. Until you have learned how to master these gifts, you should use them very carefully, if at all. But your father can—”

“I mean at all,” Jon said. “She doesn’t want me to use them, ever. Even when I’m grown. She wants me to promise never to use them.” 

Bruce said nothing, because the obvious response was _and what does your father say to that,_ but he wouldn’t put the boy in that position. Possibly when he talked to Clark about this, he would skip the talking entirely and just go directly to punching him in the face. He thought about a long-ago conversation between the two of them in the diner on Tuesday, back when Kon had first entered their lives and had looked to Clark to be his father, and he had sat Clark down and told him to get better at this, fast. 

“When you are a parent,” Bruce said carefully, “the safety of your child is the most important thing in the world to you. You will do anything to keep them safe.”

“You don’t keep Damian safe,” Jon said heatedly. “You take him on missions with you all the time. You let him do all kinds of things.”

“Listen to me,” Bruce said. “When Damian came to live with me, these were things he already knew how to do. You know what Damian’s early life was like, and I’m betting there are things about that life he’s told you that he hasn’t told me, even. Giving Damian the kind of life you are privileged to have was never an option, for him. When I tried it, it only ended in disaster, and put both of us at risk. He can’t change who he is.”

If this was the sort of comparison Jon was making in his head, the odds were he had said it to Lois, too. No wonder she was less than thrilled at Jon’s closeness to Damian. The day was probably not too far distant when she would forbid Jon to see him entirely, and Damian’s world would shatter then. His heart ached for his son. It would be hard to forgive Lois for that one. _Make your own son miserable if you want, but stay away from mine,_ he would say.

“I wish I could change who I am,” Jon said in a very quiet voice, and yes, he would proceed directly to the punching part, in this conversation with Clark. For God’s sake. “That’s why I—” the boy said, and stopped.

“That’s why what?”

He gave an awkward shrug, and kept his eyes down. “I just. . . that’s why I like being at your place, sometimes. I don’t feel. . . wrong, when I’m there. Doing the stuff you do is just normal, to you guys.”

“You are welcome in our house at any time, Jon.”

“I sometimes think. . .” His voice was so soft Bruce had to strain to hear it. “I sometimes think what it would be like, if I lived there all the time. Like, maybe I could do that, even.” 

“That would make your parents very sad, to be without you.”

“Yeah. I dunno. They wouldn’t have me to fight about, so maybe they would be happier.” 

_God damn you, Clark._ He was silent a minute, thinking. “Do you know,” he said, “that when he was about your age, Dick asked me if he could go live with the Gordons?”

The boy’s head came up. “Nightwing?” he said, in an awed voice.

“The very same. He wanted something different from what he had, and he had this picture in his head of what a normal family was like – a family not in a circus caravan, or a Gothic mansion, but just a normal family sitting around the breakfast table in a normal house. The sort of thing he saw on TV. That was what he wanted, so he asked if he could go live with Commissioner Gordon and his family.”

“Okay, but it was a little because of Batgirl too,” Jon said, and Bruce laughed at that. 

“Well you’re not wrong there,” he said. “Anyway, I was relatively new to the whole parenting thing, and I didn’t have much training in it at all. When Dick asked if he could go live somewhere else, well, I felt like I had failed profoundly – failed him. It was possibly the saddest I’ve ever been.”

“I don’t really think of you being sad about things,” Jon said, and Bruce gave another laugh at that, if a bit shorter. All the grief he had to beat back every day of his life, all the darkness that crouched at his door in wait. Well at least he was convincing enough to a thirteen-year-old. 

“Let’s get you home,” Bruce said. “Tell you what, do you think it would spoil your dinner if we made a swing through Big Belly to pick up some milkshakes on the way?”

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Jon said with a grin, and what Bruce wouldn’t give to be able to shrug off a dark mood like that. The mercurial moodswings of an adolescent had their advantages. And then, something in the way Jon looked at him, the thrill in his eyes at the thought of sharing a secret with him, even if it was just a milkshake – with a jolt he realized that Jon looked at him the same way Dick had looked at Clark when he was that age, that same look of hero-worship and mute awe. He thought of what Hal would say to that, and how he would probably laugh his ass off. 

He dropped Jon off at his building, and drove home wrapped in thought.

* * *

“When he was very young my grandfather defeated the _qutrub_.” The door to their bedroom was ajar, and Damian’s voice came drifting down the hallway. “ _Qutrub_ is often translated werewolf, but this _qutrub_ was a jackal-headed variant, much more deadly than your average werewolves, which are easy to defeat if you know the secret to it.”

“Kid, you know there’s no such thing as a werewolf, right? Tell me you know that.” 

“Of course there are werewolves, have you ever fought one?”

“No, because they’re not _real_.”

“Well plenty of people would say that none of the monsters you have fought were real, just because they were in space.”

“Fair,” Hal said, and Bruce pushed back the door. Hal was lying in the bed, and Damian was sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him, while the gray fluffball of a kitten wandered up and down Hal and periodically lowered her head to bite out another chunk of Hal’s flesh. 

“Speaking of monsters,” Bruce said, plucking the feral little thing off him. She hissed and splayed the murderous talons of her feet.

“No kidding, I thought kittens were supposed to be cute, why the fuck are there needles strapped to her toes, is she broken?” 

“She’s an excellent climber,” Damian said, pulling her off her attempt to make it to Bruce’s groin and sink her teeth in. 

“All right, back to the pantry with her. And go see if you can help Alfred with dinner, he said something about a tart earlier and I’m sure he would appreciate the help. Let’s let Hal rest a bit more,” he said, because he could see the weariness on Hal’s face, and knew how hard he was trying to keep it from his voice. 

Damian collected his kitten, but looked cross about it. “Then how come _you’re_ staying,” he muttered, but he said it in Arabic so Bruce could pretend not to hear. 

“And shut the door,” he called. The bedroom door closed on Damian and his still-hissing ball of homicidal fluff. Hal’s eyes slid shut as the door closed. Bruce sat on the bed, running a hand over Hal’s head, brushing a thumb against the side of his face. 

“You should have sent him packing,” Bruce said. “I never meant for him to tire you like that.”

“’S fine,” Hal murmured. “I didn’t mean to. . . keep him shut out like that. I’m new to this gig.” 

Bruce carded a hand through that thick hair. “You’re a quicker study than I was.”

“Mm. Are you petting me?”

“You’re very soft.” 

Hal gave a soft chuckle. “Make me sound like a hamster.”

“Much nicer than a hamster. Those little bastards bite.”

“And I don’t?”

“Good point.” He shrugged off his jacket and shoes, and climbed on the bed beside him, curling an arm protectively around him, settling his head on Hal’s shoulder. 

_This okay?_ he signed, and Hal nodded.

“Yeah, baby,” he whispered. They lay there in silence for a while, and Bruce tracked the rise and fall of the chest beneath him. Hal’s breathing felt much deeper and more even than it had earlier today. It meant the pain was receding, but like water caught in a tidal pool, it also meant the pain had probably centralized somewhere, had focused on one particular joint. 

_Where?_ he asked.

 _Back_ , Hal said. Bruce got up and retrieved the pain patches, came back and settled on the bed again. 

Bruce tapped his hip, and Hal groaned, shifted onto his side. Bruce eased his shirt up, adhered the patches in a line going down his spine. Hal rolled onto his back again, letting his eyes drift shut. Bruce tucked the blankets around him more firmly. “I’m sorry,” Hal murmured. His eyes were open again, watching Bruce.

_Sorry for what?_

“I know you were hoping things were. . . . better.” He swallowed. “I know you’re. . . disappointed.”

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, and he bent his head to Hal’s chest. What a selfish ass he was. For Hal to lie here thinking he had disappointed him – as if he could ever, had ever. 

They had been together for almost two years now – a year of learning how to be together, how to love each other, and then a year of marriage after that. It was the longest amount of time he had ever been with anyone, and he had thought, before, when he had considered it, that a long-term relationship or a marriage would be an experience of loving the same person, in the same way, over a given span of time. Only lately had he come to realize what a foolish assumption that had been – the assumption of someone who had spent most of his life milling about in the vestibule of love but never really going inside. Now he knew that love changed, that it in fact progressed, that it was a dynamic experience rather than a static one. He had thought two years ago that he was in love with Hal Jordan, and looking back at it, he wanted to laugh at the small, selfish, grasping quality of his love back then. It had been such a narrow love, that of a child clutching a toy to him and crying if it was taken away. He had thought he had known what love was, but he hadn’t really even found the front door, let alone stepped inside it. Even now, he knew he was only in the first few rooms of the house, and he was starting to suspect that the hallways and corridors of love were endless, that he would always be pushing back the door on a new place in his love he had not known existed before, a new room with new vistas and entirely new emotions he hadn’t even felt yet, languages of the heart he had yet to learn. 

He raised his head. _Not disappointed,_ he signed. _Angry at the disease. Not at you. Never you._

Hal cocked a brow. “I mean, that’s some pretty revisionist history you’ve got there. You’ve been plenty pissed at me before.”

 _Not about the disease. Never. Not that._ And he signed _never_ again, for good measure. 

“So then you’re not going to be pissed at me when I tell you I think the kitten peed in the bed?”

“Jesus Christ, Jordan,” he sighed. He settled back in the crook of Hal’s arm. Hal’s thumb was describing a small circle on his arm, just absently. He wondered if Hal might go to sleep, but most likely no sleep would come until the pain in his spine had ebbed a bit. There were things he would like to show Hal from his current investigation, some questions Hal might be able to answer for him, but for tonight he needed his rest. It could wait until morning. 

“Jon was over here today,” Bruce said aloud. 

“Hm.”

“I drove him home tonight.”

“Hm.”

“Did you know that Lois doesn’t want him using any of his powers, at all, ever?”

The thumb on his arm stopped moving. Hal sighed. “Can’t say I’m surprised about that.”

Bruce raised his head. It was easier to talk more quietly if Hal could see his face anyway. “You meant Clark,” he said. “Last week, when I mentioned Lois. I said, you think she’s too hard on Jon, and you said no that’s not what I think. You were talking about Clark. That’s who she’s angry at.”

Bruce watched his face. “Which you know by observation, or because Clark talked to you about it?”

Hal’s eyes were evasive, which meant Clark had indeed talked to him, and he wasn’t going to betray that confidence. It was a testament to his nobility of character, which was fine because he was in fact a terrible liar, and Bruce could usually find out everything he needed anyway. He put his head back down on Hal’s chest and considered. Strange what a twinge it gave him, that Clark would open up to Hal about this and not to him. Not surprising, really, but still. Sometimes it didn’t do to pry into just how much Hal knew about something, because the answer was likely to be, everything. 

“Are Damian and Jon—” he started, and then stopped. Hal was silent. “You know what, never mind. I’m being ridiculous, they’re thirteen.” Still Hal said nothing, so Bruce raised his head again and narrowed his eyes at him, studying his face. For once that face was bland and unreadable. 

“Hey listen,” Hal said. “You can’t go taking it out on Alfred, if I have a bad day. Like, what the hell was he supposed to do?”

“You’re kidding, Alfred talked to you too? What the hell is wrong with people, why do they talk to you and not to me?”

“No of course he didn’t, don’t be an ass. I could just tell something was wrong when he brought up another tray a little bit ago, and things being wrong with you is the only thing that ever makes him look like that. So go apologize.”

Bruce sighed again and put his head back down. “And it didn’t occur to you that he knows that, and so he makes sure you know that something’s wrong, so you will tell me to apologize.”

“I know that, but I’m not going to jeopardize my relationship with the most important person in this house, as well as my source of waffles with crème anglaise. Also Jesus Christ, if I had known families were such a work-out, I would have thought twice before joining one, because this shit is exhausting. And yes I do in fact know we’re a family, and I am working through my issues with the money, and that’s the last conversation we’re going to have about that.”

“For now,” Bruce said, but quietly enough that Hal might not have heard it, except for the arm that tightened around his neck, playfully choking him. His muscles wouldn’t have been able to do that, earlier today. 

“Mmm yes, that’s it,” Bruce murmured, closing his eyes and letting himself go limp in the chokehold, a smile on his face. Hal laughed.

“Oh my God, I forgot what a fucking masochist you are. Get up, I’m trying to beat the shit out of you, stop making it weird.”

Bruce laughed too, and pulled Hal’s face closer to his. Their kiss was gentle, but Bruce’s hunger made it hard for him to keep it gentle. He had been away for three days, after all. And coming this afternoon with Hal watching him had been nice, but he hadn’t been able to kiss Hal the way he wanted, and this—this re-connection, this was what he had been needing since he had first walked in the door this afternoon. Another unpleasant thought, that perhaps all his anger of this afternoon had been a tantrum after all; a tantrum that he had wanted Hal and Hal wasn’t immediately available to him, and he had covered his anger and made it about other things so he didn’t look like the spoiled child he knew in fact he was. 

“Hey,” Hal said, looking at him intently, a hand on his face. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“That thing where your head spins off into wherever it goes. Stay here with me.”

Bruce considered that. _Stay here,_ Hal said, but _here_ was full of problems that resisted solutions and people who resisted solutions and complications that puzzled and enraged him and that lacked the clean lines of an investigations. _Here_ was, frankly, a bit of a mess. _Here_ was where Hal was.

“All right,” he said. Hal kissed him again, long and slow, and then he pulled Bruce onto his chest and held him there. 

“By the way,” Hal said. “I keep my apartment in Coast because sometimes after a day at Ferris I’m too tired to make it back to Gotham, even by zeta, and I just need to crash there.”

“Yes,” Bruce sighed. “I know. I’m the asshole.”

And Hal laughed at that, at the long-ago reminder, and held him tighter. “Not _the_ asshole,” he said. “ _My_ asshole.”

“Yes,” Bruce said again, and he stayed cradled on that beautiful, impossible chest until sleep finally took him, and dreams soaked in green light.


End file.
